


Thank You for Being a Friend

by mahwaha



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Everyone has regrets and thinks about sexy things, Gen, IN SPACE!, Mecha, Mind Meld
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-17
Updated: 2015-04-17
Packaged: 2018-03-23 09:12:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3762574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mahwaha/pseuds/mahwaha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Oh my god, Leijon. Don’t think I won’t eject your rowdy cat ass out of this Gundam. I can handle losing half of my brain if it means forgetting this ever happened.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thank You for Being a Friend

**Author's Note:**

  * For [buttmaster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/buttmaster/gifts).



The first thing Nepeta feels in sync with her new partner is an explosive amount of secondhand embarrassment about her own genitals. That’s followed by a flood of shame for knowing that knowing is a two-way street, now. She’d wonder what Dave skimmed off the top of her own pan, but the feedback loop makes the question completely pointless. He’s obviously hung up about her less-conciliatory memories with Feferi, post-Equius. And honestly? She doesn’t have time to feel embarrassed about that, because she’s too busy choking behind her visor—it’s fogged up over her face, save for the wet streaks where her tears have managed to drip. 

“No.” Dave’s voice fills her helmet, too emphatic for his own good. “No way. We are not even gonna start, ok—”

“It’s even funnier now that I know what that _is_ ,” she whispers. Between Dave’s memories—good and bad, morbid and helium-light—Nepeta feels 9Lives drifting off course. It takes some fumbling before she can defog her visor, just in time to catch Dave frowning up a storm while they ease away from H-Base. Their pan-addled psionic engine handles like a dismembered dream, which is easier to think when she knows it’s a stranger. All she feels is the phantom flush eating up Dave’s neck and the echo of his defensiveness.

“You _purr_ acticed on a pizza ba—”

“Oh my god, Leijon. Don’t think I won’t eject your rowdy cat ass out of this Gundam. I can handle losing half of my brain if it means forgetting this ever happened.” Dave stares forward while their hands clench in unison, but he doesn’t share her grin. That’s fine. It’s not like he isn’t in on all of her little shame moments, now—the self-insert fanfics, the 100d, furry role-plays with Terezi, the time she tried to clean an antlerbeast while completely sloshed on soporifics, and even the time she...

“Oh my god. Put a disclaimer on your forehead.” 9Lives swats at the void stretching ahead. Dave swats at the cerebropsionic fluid suspending them in the mecha’s head. “No one deserves to know what Fishdick McGee looks like for sloppy hate-seconds.”

Nepeta scoffs. “I was _eight_.”

Dave gags. Audibly. “Don’t make this more horrifying than it has to be, holy hell.”

“Sweeps! You know what I mean! Bad decisions. Regrets. Like touching your human sister’s—”

“Truce! Parley! She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, come _on_.” 

He swats, she swats, and 9Lives swats with them. While Nepeta urges them forward, Dave corrects their course. She can still feel Rose’s rumblespheres beneath not-her hand, but bites the comment on her tongue about his sharp memory. 

“Truce if you never bring him up again.”

“Yeah, well, truce if you never bring her up again, too.”

Nepeta nods. “Truce.”

Dave stares forward. He’s still flushed. “Truce.”

Between them, the silence yawns. So does space. So does the writhing, nightmarish mass swallowing starlight and spitting out static—way, way out by the winking glint of J-Base’s overflow storage unit. It’s still close enough to make Nepeta’s ears pop in her helmet, and the crawl of Dave’s skin sets her jaw.

She sighs, staring as long as she can before she feels the hissing around her eyes. “Guess we better finish this perimeter check, huh?”

“Yep,” Dave says. “Unless you want to spread your cheeks for a tongue lashing that’ll last for eons. Which I don’t.” He keeps his interest in the mech speeding out from J-Base to their shared panspace, but Nepeta knows he can feel her itching to join in. She sighs again, longer, before turning her attention forward.

It sucks, but it’s life until she and Dave acclimate—and she’s still jumping between the now and Rose’s spheres, so it isn’t like she’s totally battle-ready. 

“Hey, we have a truce,” Dave says, jabbing a finger in her direction.

“I’m not talking about her!”

“Stop brain-voyeuring all over that memory!”

“Then stop thinking about me autopailing!”

Dave chokes; Nepeta chokes with him. The ambient buzzing from the terror loitering near J-Base almost tickles.

It takes the paper-ripping rasp of a death screech to set them moving again. 9Lives shudders like it needs a full-body oiling, metal groaning and grating until they straighten out. Nepeta fusses with the organicord at the back of her helmet, clearing her throat.

“Nice space weather we’re having,” Dave says. “Black and bleak. Clear skies. Looking like a Lite-Brite with none of the fun colors.”

“You’re dumb.” Nepeta glances to him and smiles, but the expression feels crooked and off-centered. “Tell me more about _The Golden Girls_.”

“Well, first we gotta sing the theme song.” Dave seizes the change in topic like he expects it to run away. “You can’t tell me you don’t know the words if I know the words, Leijon.”

The tension eases. She isn’t anymore battle-ready, but this feels like progress. Less-awkward progress. So she seizes onto it too, opening her mouth to launch forward.


End file.
